Sqrlta asked me to write a short post on my experiences with composting. There are several excellent how-to articles on the web on composting that may do a better job but this is my experience and suited for my purpose.

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, we were lucky enough to have space demarcated for composting although it was an open-style composting made up of wooden planks and chicken mesh. The previous owners had simply dumped dry leaves and twigs in and weren’t actively composting kitchen waste. The first thing I did was remove the mesh and planks from one side of the composting area and place a plastic composting container that I got from Amazon.

It’s that time of the year again when the cold recedes and spring is around the corner. Although the winter isn’t much in Texas, it still prevents you from tending to your garden and everything looks dreary. We have two large live oak trees; one in the front yard and one in the back. The […]

Who says blogging has to be hifalutin[1]? Well, sometimes I do. We consider Twitter for stray random thoughts and reserve blogging for serious long rants or as they say now, think pieces. But it doesn’t have to be, just like this post proves it. I started typing without knowing what I was going to write […]

If the India government really wants everyone to experience something be it a movie or a book, however crappy it may be, it bans it. No wonder India is primarily a nation of bans. I’ve stayed away from outrage blogging but this is more of an exasperated ‘C’mon! You can’t be this stupid‘ blogging. Lately, governments in India have banned sale and consumption of beef (in Maharashtra), the movie Fifty Shades of Grey, and the documentary on the Dec.16 rape incident ‘India’s Daughter’ – all in one week. After YouTube pulled it down, torrents must’ve been firing all night long because nothing stops Indians from doing something that they’ve been asked not to do. Heck, I’m sure some Hindus may even be tempted to try beef. In fact, if beef could be streamed online, I’m sure some people would be tempted.

From a pure Francis Underwoodian perspective, regardless of what they truly believe is the right thing to do, why would the Indian government bring attention to something they want people to forget? People in India seemingly had moved on from the horrific rape incident more than a year ago and the documentary would’ve scarcely made a dent in the public consciousness. Surely, the rapists’ reprehensible comments would’ve sparked outrage on Twitter for a week and after that, every social media guru would’ve moved on to the next outrage; perhaps Deepika Padukone’s shoes or something.

From my experience during the blogging days, I would like to remind the Indian government that no one really gives a shit. Everyone is simply trying to survive the next day. Forget about offended sensibilities and focus on actual physical harm; that’s really the job of any government. As for Twitter, don’t pay attention to the noise. Nearly everyone mostly seeks attention and people care more about RTs and Favorites the minute after they tweet out a brilliant opinion.

If you’re going to be Machiavellian, at least do a good job at being that. Focus on the ends and not on the means. Next time, you don’t want a documentarian running amok showcasing what most Indians believe anyway, deny them access to a convicted rapist. I’m sure other totalitarian regimes even the ones with a billion people know that basic fact. Jeez!

Sites like Reddit, Digg, and Hacker News and services like Facebook and Twitter are so much faster than this one man band…trying to keep pace is like racing an F1 car on roller skates. So, I’ve traded that velocity for quality (or, if you’d prefer, fussiness). I no longer post 10-12 things per day. Instead I post 4-6 of the most interesting things I can share with you on that given day.

This post by full-time blogger Jason Kottke kinda nudges me into writing something on this blog again. I started out blogging when I thought I had plenty of thoughts to share with the world. And I did. For almost 6-7 years. Then, I realized I probably did not have as many thoughts or rather I didn’t want to share them as extensively. Or maybe those thoughts didn’t exceed 140 characters.

But like Jason, I always preferred sharing interesting links. Hence DesiPundit. I try to keep some of that going via my Favorites blog that I know fewer than 5 people read. It doesn’t help that I do share 10-odd recent links below the first post like Jason does because hey, who reads this blog anyway let alone the other Favorites blog. But I persist albeit less frequently. Jason, of course, has the luxury of being a full-time blogger and he makes enough off his always-popular blog to have the time and luxury to dig out great links.

To cut an already-long post that probably should’ve been a tweet short, I sometimes wonder if I should post those interesting links with a short commentary on here, like Jason does, instead of on Twitter? Perhaps then I can re-open the comments instead of sending you to Twitter [1].